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The back room at Blondie’s Salon in Independence is full of different colors, dyes and chemicals used to change someone’s hair. The hairdressers learn how to use these new techniques in the back room at hair shows and conventions. Only professionals in the beauty industry can go to a show or someone can buy a ticket as a guest of a hairdresser.

‘The last show I went to was four years ago, in downtown Kansas City,’ Mrs. Angela Tatum, a self-employed hairdresser, said.

Tickets for hair shows and conventions cost between $50 to $130 on average, and shows range from local to international. Hair shows and conventions are mainly meant for educational purposes, to teach new techniques to anyone in the beauty industry.

‘I learned new waxing techniques, and how to use ‘hair bling,’ Mrs. Connie Tanner said, a hairdresser who also does facials out of her home.

The show where Tanner learned how to use hair bling was in Iowa on the first weekend of April. Tanner and Tatum both work at Blondie’s Salon, and Tatum was wearing a couple magenta colored tinsel extensions that can be washed and heated just like hair or hair bling, that Tanner had attached for her. Tatum said that she had learned different cutting and coloring techniques as well as specialty styles from the hair shows and conventions she had gone to. Hair shows aren’t just to show new products though.

‘There was one hair show [I] went to in Jefferson City, right after I had gotten out of hair school,” Tatum said about her favorite hair show. “They made crazy designs out of hair that were far from normal. They made one lady’s hair look like a wedding cake, and some others hair looked like feathers.”

Mrs. Diana Ohmes, who has been a client of Tatum’s for about eight years, said she would consider financially supporting Tatum to attend a hair convention. Ohmes had heard of hair shows and conventions before, and had been to one.

‘The first experience that I ever had with a hair show, my sisters and I had gone to a local beauty school and had been asked to pose as models for their hair show there,” said Ohmes “That’s the only hair show I’ve ever been to, because they are really geared toward the people in the hair industry.’

Ohmes doesn’t believe that she asks Tatum to do anything crazy to her hair, like some of the conventions show.

‘I normally just have it colored, cut, and highlighted when I visit Angela,’ Ohmes said.

Tatum thought that some of the things she saw at some hair shows were crazy, but that she had been asked to do some crazy things to her client’s hair too.

‘I’m uncomfortable doing flat-tops on guys,” Tatum said. “For girls, well I once had a 60 year old woman who wanted her head shaved into a mohawk. I also had a lady who wanted her hair to look like it had grown out. Like with dark roots for a couple inches, and then the rest lighter. Yeah, it was pretty weird.’